To Pamela A. Moffett
17 or 24 August 1870? • Elmira or Buffalo, N.Y.
(MS: NPV, UCCL 00497)

Wednesday.1

My Dear Sister—

I will come as soon as I can leave Livy—& will give you notice beforehand. My coming at this time would stop Livy’s progress; for whilst she sleeps but poorly now, she may be said to not sleep at all when I am away—even when she is well. If she went without sleep now that she is weak & suffering, it would be very bad for her, of course. I do hope Ma will get better fast, & get well—& I hope I may see her so when I come.

Livy & I send abundance of love to Ma & you, & all.

Sam.

over.

I wish you c would get all the gossip you can out of Mollie about Cousin [James Lampton ]& family, without her knowing it is I that want it. I want every little trifling detail, about how they look & dress, & what they say, & how the house is furnished—& the various ages & characters of the tribe. Mollie does up gossip mighty well. I have preserved the other letter she wrote you about that gang. I wish to write the whole thing up—but not publish it for a great many years. That is, if the story I write from it could be recognized by Jim or the family.2

SLC

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

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1 The Clemenses probably remained in Elmira at least through 21 August, for the public tribute to Jervis Langdon. Clemens might have written this letter either on 17 or 24 August, if it enclosed a letter from his cousin Fred Quarles (see 31 Aug 70 to PAM). If it did not enclose Quarles’s letter, then even the year is somewhat doubtful. Clearly he wrote it before early January 1873, however, by which time he and Charles Dudley Warner were at work on The Gilded Age (7 Aug 70 to Larned, n. 1; 20 Apr 73 to Whitelaw Reid, DLC). See note 2.

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2 Mollie Clemens’s letter to Pamela about James J. Lampton (1817–87), his wife, Elizabeth (1820–95), and their five children has not been found. Lampton, Jane Clemens’s first cousin, was a St. Louis bill collector, traveling salesman, cotton and tobacco merchant, and, by the early 1870s, an attorney. He became the model for Colonel Sellers in The Gilded Age (Inds, 397; Lampton: 1989, 7–8; 1990, 136–41). Clemens may already have had such a political satire in mind, for in Washington in early July he had “gathered material enough for a whole book!” (8 July 70 to OLC).

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS, Jean Webster McKinney Family Papers, Vassar College Library (NPV).

Previous publication: L4, 184–185.

Provenance:see McKinney Family Papers in Description of Provenance.

Emendations and textual notes:

James Lampton • [underscored in pencil on MS, probably by Pamela Moffett]